Analysis of Fire Resistance of Concrete Structural Members Based on Different Fire Models: An Illustrative Example of the Slab Panel Assessment

Abstract

The paper deals with the analysis of fire resistance of concrete structural members exposed to fire based on different fire models. An illustrative example of the assessment of a slab panel is presented. Several fire models are employed in order to predict the evolution of temperature in a selected fire compartment. Some of these fire models, namely the ISO fire curve and the parametric fire curve, are implemented in an in-house MATLAB code. For the more comprehensive fire models, external scientific software tools are used, namely the CFAST software for the zone model and the FDS software for the CFD (computational fluid dynamics) model. By employing the results of the fire simulations, the fire resistance of the slab panel is assessed. It is performed by a one-way coupled numerical procedure based on a well-known heat transfer finite element model and iterative sectional mechanical analysis. The procedure is implemented in an in-house MATLAB code. It is shown that (i) the numerical procedure can be employed in connection with different fire models and (ii) the fire resistance prediction can be strongly influenced by the type of selected fire model.